Is there even a proper category for this thing? T T'
(I apologize for the first corny title, but I do live in Japan. I teach English, so I have a right to make this joke. Think of it as my way of burning off passive aggression. I'd also like you to note that this is the hardest I have ever tried to write authentic characters that are in canon, and the most editing I have ever done before posting a thing, so suggestions or KIND reminders of any screw-ups would be helpful. Thanks guys. Peace out.)
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RAISED FROM CHAOS
A Fanfiction by Emiri-chan the GREAT
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CHAPTER 1: Send in the Crowns
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L.L.
This city felt more like him.
Heavy clouds gave it the proper lighting for its atmosphere. The streets were dirty, the people oblivious, tiny, and self-encompassed. The greatness of their civilization- the towering buildings, the occasional memorial- all did nothing to redeem them to the practiced eye. Everywhere proof of their greed and dishonesty paraded itself on billboards and faces: buyers and sellers, disreputables and victims.
Men searched for opportunities to take and own and consume, both ignoring and mocking with their glances. Men slumped in ratty jackets and jeans; men braced disdainfully against the flow of crowds in sleek suits, wielding briefcases in place of shields and cellular telephones in place of swords, muttering meaningless words with soulless eyes. Women scorned women with their expressions, hiding like cowards behind scarce or unsuitable clothing, colored hair and heavy makeup, unknowingly begging those around them for acceptance, all the more repulsive for their efforts. Children eagerly derided him for his clothing and showed reverence for nothing as they screamed down pavement on wheeled devices.
They were a far cry from the people of Asgard, and he relished it. It was refreshing to bathe in their inadequacy, their weakness. These were a broken, visibly pathetic people, and the very rooftops sang of their disease.
Not golden statues of virtue that mocked him as he went. Not heroes singing their own praises and reveling in the downfall of their evil foes. Not the universal elite. His mouth ticked at one corner.
Not gods.
Here he felt... taller, even among those physically larger than he. Looser. He felt stronger. Wiser. Intelligent.
Powerful.
That was something he'd not felt in a long, long time.
Garbage crunched under his feet as he walked, gleaming black leather shoes dispersing cigarettes, papers and magazine clippings soaked with rain, mortals parting before him in a similar manner. Dead leaves blew in from the decidedly ill-suited square of forest that sprung up suddenly in the midst of cement, glass and metal, red-brown patches catching in his coat and long, green houndstooth scarf.
The wind was as pathetic in slowing him as the people of this city had been the last time he had set to rule them, and the thought pulled a grin across his lips. Better days, those had been.
The dark-haired man peered up at the tall buildings and neon signs that hid a sick, crippled race beneath their facade. Yes, he conceded, grinning slowly, following the height of a sleek, monumental building to the word STARK bannered across its side, sunlight fading swiftly behind it: a self-made monument to one man alone.
Loki smiled wider. Indeed, he liked New York.
Perhaps he'd keep it.
"You won't win."
Loki whirled around to face the sudden, labored voice originating from somewhere around his knees, his lip curled in an automatic snarl.
At first there was no one, but then he realized that the man was leaning against the wall of a brick building under a fire escape, covered in newspapers and smelling of sweat and garbage, among other things. He looked as if he had never bathed or shaved, lips cracked and the color of rotting fish. Telltale yellow in his eyes and teeth spoke of disease.
Loki smirked. Perhaps this was the city's mascot.
"You won't win," he repeated, hacking in the deep, practiced cough of a dying man.
The god of mischief laughed openly; this was a scenario he'd dreamed of having. This creature, of all people, gasping and sputtering alone in the corner of a city hovel, had the gall to challenge him. Well- what fun was domination without toying with one's subjects?
"Will you be stopping me then, Commander?" he drawled, approaching slowly, the tap of his cane dragging by like the ticking of seconds the man had left to live. "What is your plan? Kill me with your stench?" The corner of his mouth twitched ever northward. "With blood loss from the fleas?"
"Your... heart..."
Loki raised an eyebrow.
"S'not... in it..."
Some of the mirth slipped away from his face. This was not going as he'd desired. "And what would you claim to know of my heart, audacious one?"
"I read... th' papers..." His breath was failing, but he could still speak with a hint of dry humour as he fingered some of the news print he wore. "Saw you...on TV...Seen it before... other men..." He struggled to continue.
"You... wan'... t'feel bigger... than you are."
Fire flared in sharp green eyes, and his face twitched into an animal's snarl before hiding behind smooth skin with the ease of centuries of practice.
"I see you are hoping to die sooner than your illness will permit," Loki commented mildly. "Very well."
He held a hand out to cover the man's throat and lifted him above the heap of garbage bins and newspapers, splitting, ancient leather shoes drifting above the pavement. Ragged tufts of hair jutted from between Loki's clean fingers.
His glare could have burned a hole through the man's face.
"This is the highest anyone has ever lifted you in this world, isn't it?" Loki snarled, peering into dead brown eyes. "And it's the highest you will ever be."
He tightened his grip on his staff, blue flashes of electricity peppering dull gold.
"Let it not be said that I am without mercy."
The man let out a sputtering sound exactly like the coughing moments ago. Looking closer, Loki saw the man's mouth curve up into a smile as the light faded from his eyes. He was laughing at him.
"Mercy," he gurgled. "So tha's... what you're after."
Loki's blood chilled.
Without thought or expression, the god struck with his cane straight through the man's chest and into the back wall, spraying the bricks with a tight circle of red like a gunshot. Milliseconds before he ran him through, Loki saw the mortal's heart stop and his lungs drain of breath.
He dropped the corpse without ceremony, staring down at it.
The smile remained, laughing at him from cold, slack features, and its message was clear: he hadn't allowed Loki to kill him. The man had died on his own.
Damned humans.
After a few silent moments, pain spiked abruptly in his skull, and he knew that this was all the time he would be allowed. His teeth gritted to cracking, and mentally he conceded. It was time to put on the rest of the show.
Loki turned back to his destination, keeping his eyes fixed on the body until he could look no longer. His eyes narrowed.
City mascot indeed.
~:{A}:~
T.S.
"Dummy, if I wanted you to turn off the lights I would have made you into a Clapper!"
The coffee incident that morning had been bad enough. Too much sugar, cream when he didn't take it, whatever. After those damn green super-food shakes for weeks, he could deal with a latte. But engine oil instead of Bailey's?
Community college it is. Irish coffee doesn't have to be that authentic.
"It's your own fault, squirt. Take it like a man."
Dummy chirped miserably somewhere toward the door, probably trying to make a run for it, while placing blame on the guy who made him. Good thing he'd included stairs and not an elevator into the Stark Basement Lair Mark II. Dummy's wheels were currently squeaking on floor wax, so he must have been trying to climb them anyway. Sigh. At least he had spunk...
Now he was stuck under a few million dollars worth of vehicle in the dark with fluid that tasted like this morning's coffee dripping onto his face, half-wedged into a wheel well with his arm stuck up into an area that, were the car a human being, would have been highly inappropriate in a public setting.
"Fondling machines; I doubt the tabloids would be surprised," Tony grumbled.
"I did warn you, sir, for the sake of both expediency and personal hygiene, that you should probably allow me to handle the repairs."
"Jarvis, override the switch and give me some light," he groaned, ignoring the snide remark and reaching for the dropped socket wrench he had somehow managed to knock off of its perch inside the guts of his precious, beautiful, freaking frustrating car. "In fact, gimme a spotlight under here."
"How befitting of both your ego and your performance, sir. "
Tony poked his head out from under the car. "Jarvis, I know when you're being patronizing; Keep talking sweet and I'll switch you to the female setting."
"A frightening thought for both parties involved, sir."
"Yeah, well, hard to- ignore your feminine side if it creeps out in continual bitchiness," Tony gritted through a mouthful of socket wrench, trying to reach the-
"I know you are, bitch, but what am I?"
Blink.
That was Jarvis snooty voice, all right, but... he hadn't even said "sir".
"What was that, Jarvis?"
"I said, sir, that your mother is so- Override- calcula-"
Glitching noises came from the speakers.
Another blink.
"-rubber baby buggy bumpers."
Okay, that did it. The insults weren't even good; they couldn't have been newer than the 90's, and that tongue twister had probably been the first one ever invented. As in, along the same timeline as the wheel. And fire.
Tony pulled himself out from under the car with a sigh and prepared to rip Jarvis' motherboards out by the root. "All right, Jarvis; what kind of crap were you watching to get viruses like that-?"
"A virus, Stark? Is that what you think of me?"
Tony stopped dead.
He actually dropped the wrench.
Someone had started across the floor from the region of the stairwell behind him, and Tony's lungs sealed up. That tone was too deep and too dangerous to be Jarvis.
The last time he had heard that voice, he had sailed out a window without his suit, been beat up by a bunch of galactic iguanas and almost nuked himself into plasma in another dimension. Sleepless night after night comforting a hyperventilating Pepper after her own nightmares of being attacked by his suit, dreams of suffocating in darkness and cold with aliens pouring in around him-
Oh yes. He knew that voice.
Tony knew what he'd find if he turned. A mental flash: golden horns, a green cape and a veritable silo of ego seasoned liberally with megalomania.
Loki.
"I hope you don't mind my barging in. The door was open. And such a vast lack of security seemed an invitation."
There was no sweat, but it felt like he was soaking. The room felt colder and way, way too quiet.
There was a pause as the speaker drew closer in tandem with heavy, tapping footsteps, taking their sweet time. He savoured every word in his mouth like one would a favourite dessert, something that had been anticipated for a long, long time, as dark as chocolate:
"No response from the mouthpiece of the mighty 'Avengers'?" The words dripped with almost paternal disapproval, slightly incredulous. "Hm. As I recall, you had quite a lot to say the last time you crossed my path."
Loki snapped his fingers.
The room abruptly went dark except for the overhead spotlight, and he heard generators shutting down outside the basement walls. The entire compound was losing power at once. Tony's brain went through a checklist without his permission: was that even possible?! There were backups for the backups' backups; this wasn't even-
"Silence from the man of iron. Anything is possible, it would seem."
The smile shone through in his tone.
Tony's heart gave one final panicked spasm and dropped straight through the bottom of his shoes. He couldn't bring himself to turn around. His limbs wouldn't work; it was like a short had gone through his nerves.
Come on lungs, E-start- Avengers emergency alarm sequence- Jarvis, wake up buddy-
Deep breath. That was a start.
The light. The spotlight being left on could only serve two purposes: drama or revenge. If he went so far as the right lighting, maybe he could freak Tony out even more as he came in slow, wringing it for all he was worth, when he actually had nothing on him. Or maybe he was simply gaining a humongous amount of vengeful satisfaction at playing the villain while tweaking his imaginary moustache.
So Loki was either trying to distract him, or just scare him into soiling himself.
Either way, he just couldn't let the guy's plan work. These were his favorite jeans.
"Yeah, weird," Tony managed, his tone blessedly conversational. "Actually, I'd say you fit the description of 'virus' pretty well. You know, tries to kill human beings, rewrite other organisms into something more like itself, generally too weak to be more than a bother- fairly close to the mark." Good old mouth; never lets him down. He was already typing several codes into a wrist communicator, praying that it hadn't been hacked and disarmed as well.
There was a despairing lack of beeping sounds as he entered the sequence.
Nothing.
His nerves shrieked. Guhh not good- at least Pepper's in Washington... Please don't let me add another item to that virus list by making me puke in front of you. Damn it, should have let Cap stay over this week...
Stark felt Loki moving in closer; yeah, the tortuously slow approach must have been part of his payback.
"Whoever said the virus isn't superior to humanity? It is often the victor on this world, after all." The word "victor" was strong and rather pointed.
The voice was even closer and even though he told himself it wouldn't help, Stark swung around just in time to see the green and gold maniac halt just a few feet from his person, armoured but for the helmet, half-smirking at Tony's fingers still covering the E-alarm in his watch.
Tony lowered them self-consciously. Of course.
He met Loki's stare straight on as he swiftly rummaged through a mental list of anything he'd left out in the workshop that might still save his ass.
Stall.
"So. Want that drink? I don't think you ever got one, and I doubt Asgard Package carries scotch." Pliers, coffee mug, socket wrench, exhaust pipe, fire extinguisher-
A smirk, tugged to one side by the cock of his head that accompanied it, slightly bitter with memory. Slitted eyes gleamed in a creepy emerald green. "That was an admission of my defeat," Loki explained, as though to a small child. "I can be quite diplomatic when the need arises. Such aquiescence now would be folly."
His grin grew into something more sinister.
"I have the advantage. After all."
Tony tried to wipe the remnants of any aneurysm Loki might have just caused from his face. He was relishing Stark's distress as clearly as if he'd had it painted all over him. In neon. His thoughts ran in tight little circles like heavily-caffeinated hamsters.
Of course he wasn't finished: "And, you seem to have..." The god appeared to consider it, taking one final step forward and arriving at a pleasant conclusion, saying it so clearly the word smacked against his very nose, eyes alight and sharp on his face:
"...nothing."
Glass shards showering around him, wind stinging his eyes, heartbeat at a hundred miles per hour, free-falling into a crowd, exhaust and heat singeing his arms and legs-
Tony didn't want to say that he had a point. With Jarvis down, the suit's communicator blocked and all transmissions to the basement completely cut off, Loki had effectively turned his personal stronghold into a prison. A dark prison. A dark prison with no one to know what was happening until it was far too late to rescue his cold corpse from his workshop.
As fear tactics went, this one was fairly effective.
Yyyep- this sucks.
Tony bolstered every ounce of cockiness he'd been born with.
Well, if I'm gonna die, I'm not letting Super Queen have the last word.
"Touch´e," he said lightly, putting both hands behind his back in a conscious mimicry of Loki's favorite posture in his cell. "But we've- butted heads before, so to speak, and despite a pretty big disadvantage the last time, I seem to remember... winning? Which, between rams, I gotta tell you, means something pret-ty significant 'round this ball of dirt." Tony clicked his tongue. "Yeah. Issues. Had those last time too, I think."
No acknowledgement from predatory eyes steeped in triumph.
Okay, time to go for the gold; let's just hope the stories are accurate-
"And by that I mean it usually implies something about the winner in terms of... natural attributes," Tony continued. "Maybe on your planet too, according to some of the things I've read on you. Let me see." He pretended to think. "Was it Svartalfheim, or Jotunheim? You came up short in those situations too, as I recall."
It was miniscule, but Loki's smile slipped ever so slightly.
Bingo, you smug bastard.
Tony pushed harder, a sliver of regained confidence giving a boost to the rest of it. "Didn't go so hot there, huh? To top it off, I think you were transported back to your hometown in chains last visit by none other than, hmm, who was it? Oh yeah. Big brother."
This time a quick shudder of limbs snapping taut, hands in white fists. The feel of the room changed, the charge of tension in the air shifting like Tony had flipped a switch. Something happened to Loki's face that Tony couldn't even identify, and exultation flooded him. He had the guy now.
And he was going to keep his advantage.
Take that, Rudolph; I'm going out mouthing off to a demigod.
"How's he doing, by the way?" Tony said lightly. "For an advanced race, Asgardians get fairly shitty reception. Your dad didn't even pick up the phon-"
And that was as far as he got.
A seriously strong hand wound over his throat, and he suddenly knew what it felt like to be held by his own suit; holy shit he had fingers like bear traps, and why was the ground so far away, and what on Earth made him hang lights low enough to bang his forehead on and why were they flashing? Did he even install strobes down here?
As soon as his brain pulled up the words 'oxygen deprivation', he realized Loki had started talking again: "...the last you will sully me with your words, you cowardly cur." White teeth glared out at him in a cross between a grimace and a snarl, the brightness actually hurting his eyes. The god's skin was in high def from the lighting being so close; and it made his expression far more frightening than it should have been. The words started to coalesce into something like English: "I did not live this long to allow your insolence a second time."
In for a penny.
"Moo," Tony croaked.
Loki's eyes widened further.
And that was it; Tony was going to die. He'd pissed him off; congratulations. Is this what victory was supposed to feel like? Strangulation? Why couldn't he have died in a situation involving ginger triplets like he'd always wanted? Or at least in his fastest suit at a few hundred miles an hour? The triplets would have been nice, but...
"Brother, NO!"
Well, with siblings then. Wait, what? Passing out never left room for much logic...
Someone was screaming, and someone else was growling in response. The hand vanished from his throat and brilliant lights flashed in a thousand colors, searing heat and stinging cold air rushing by at a million miles per hour until the room disappeared, taking him further and further into a hurricane of green and black energy that both burned and chilled, choked and soothed. He fell back into blackness at the end of the tunnel with words in his ears that he did not understand.
Dying sure was an awful lot like tripping on acid.
~:{A}:~
T.S.
Tony woke.
Didn't expect that.
His throat hurt. He'd have to remember to stop drinking so much right before bed; it was never easy on the vocal chords. Then pain spread to skin and the tendons beneath, and he knew something was wrong; alcohol was a harsh mistress, but never that harsh. Well, maybe that one time it had been, but...
His mind seeped back into his brain, bit by bit, until he could feel the rest of his body coming back under control, fingers flexing and moving across the floor, head rolling back and forth as he woke, slowly.
Tony groped mentally for factors to make sense of where he was. There was a thrum of energy in the surface he'd laid upon, and the frequency reminded him eerily of the large-scale arc reactor in his compound. That chilled him; the raw energy in that thing was rarely so forgiving of contact; (Obadiah had figured that out rather permanently.) And why was it running through a flat surface? Matter of fact, HOW was it running through a flat surface?
Then his brain finally took over, screaming with just how wrong it all felt and his eyes snapped open.
Tony gasped as old, familiar anxiety crushed him in its grasp.
Space. Freaking space.
They were suspended in a box of luminous, semi-transparent rainbow energy, floating in the middle of pitch dark, star-filled, thrice-damned space.
Aliens and screaming, giant monsters flying past, blue energy singeing him at every turn, the weight of the missile hefted over his suit, the Gs pulling at him until they just didn't anymore, and the cold of the void taking him over until he began to fall into the dark, a gargantuan ship hovering in the distance...
"OH guh- nuh- what- oh God- where-?!"
Gotta get it under control, gotta- guhh no- oh shit, oh shit-
Everywhere he looked, ceiling, floor, all four walls, every corner, there was nothing but space. It was like claustrophobia turned inside out and backwards, every glance merely serving to panic him further and further until he was plastered to a corner of the small room on his backside, arms splayed out against either wall, gasping for breath and trying to calm his racing mind. It was like his brain had been boxed up as well; he just kept hitting wall after wall of space in his head.
How had this happened?! What was he doing here?! He'd only been out for- Wait, how long had he been out? Tony tried to think in reverse... There were red marks on his arms and legs from the weight of his body being in the same position for so long. His T-shirt had left wrinkle marks in his skin, so he'd been there a while.
Dum-E. The stupid coffee. The damn car. Green and horns. Fear, cold, flashing lights.
Red and blond.
Thor. Thor had showed up, just as he had been-
"So you can speak when you're terrified. Splendid." The voice was less than thrilled. "I was afraid there would be a lull in imbecilic conversation."
Tony blinked, still pressed against the wall of energy. It took him a few moments to register who was talking (which told him just how out of it he was).
There, in the opposite corner, sat Loki.
Green eyes blazed in silent fury, simple leathers and tunics replacing gaudy golden armour, posture set staunchly in a sitting position with one arm leaning on one knee, jaw set in acceptance. He couldn't have looked stonier if he'd been an actual statue.
Loki rolled his eyes. "Do stay down and breathe; vomiting will only make our current situation worse. You can manage that much, I trust?"
Tony's brain backfired like a bad engine until one thought finally found purchase in the crags of his mind:
Why was the guy in here with him?
He squinted as he stared hard at the surly god, and suddenly he caught the dull blue glow of inlays studding a metal collar around the other man's neck and shoulders, replacing the gold breastplate he usually wore. It was glaringly out of place on him colorwise, and rang distinctly of alien technology.
Silence lasted for unnumbered heartbeats as Tony caught his breath. When he spoke, it was soft, but steady:
"You owe me a new generator." Breathe. "And you didn't put us here."
Loki snorted quietly. "The mind of a prodigy, indeed."
Somehow, that idea was scarier than the alternative. "Then you're stuck here. We're stuck here."
A pained sigh. "What was it that illuminated you to this grand conclusion?"
"Oh God please, please just shut up- I need to- I have to- guh-"
Tony tried to breathe deeply, but the reactor in his chest felt as if something was clutching him between the clamps of a vice, squeezing both his breath and his calm from him like the juice from a lemon. His mind pulled up the image for him. Lemons. I hate lemons; they're so freaking disgusting, not even good in water-
Pain shot through him and thought ceased.
"Ggahhh geez! Hell! Dammit!" Stark exploded, his chest spasming like lights at a rave as he slammed a hand against the wall. "Lemons're stupid!"
He actually got a look from Loki at that one.
His reactor was not happy with him right now and it was letting him know it. Gotta fix this... There's serious magnetic pull coming from these surfaces; might be messing with the-
Bzzt!
"Agh! Bloody- Christmas!" Yep, definitely messing with it. Center of the room. Pull's weakest there; gotta get to the center of the room-
Loki seemed to perk up slightly as the human's hand clutched at his chest, wheezing as he tried to move himself to the middle of the cell. The look was eerily like a fox attracted by a rodent's movement; Tony did not approve of that look.
He tried to ignore the creepy god and maybe stand, but his legs did not want to work. Tony had to settle for an inch-by-inch crawl, and it was humiliating as hell.
Ignore him, just ignore him... Live first, comebacks later.
"Shut up," he grunted, before the Aesir had said anything.
"There is something in your flesh," Loki murmured as if he hadn't spoken, his interest in this new puzzle mildly piqued. It wasn't as if there was anything else to draw his attention. "It is... some form of metal."
"'What- illuminated you to this- grand conclusion-?'" Stark gasped, shutting his eyes and inching forward using one arm, clutching his reactor with the other. "The shiny- blue glowy thing in my chest, perhaps?"
Loki lifted a single eyebrow and not a finger to help. "Nothing so overt," he chastised. The god jerked his chin toward the real object of his scrutiny. "What are the metal pieces in your heart? They are weapons. They are not newly acquired, yet they still pose a threat to you."
Tony blinked. He could sense that?
"I find it hard to believe that even mortal medicine cannot heal such things," Loki concluded.
It creeped him out royally to know Loki could see inside his body. At least the conversation was taking his mind off of where they were, but this was a little frightening. What else could the disturbed maniac tell about him?
Nothing was safe anymore. Not even his anatomy.
Well, crap.
The god's eyes narrowed as he seemed to search deeper, literally looking through him. Tony quelled the urge to cover himself like a surprised woman in a dressing room.
"They are broken," Loki mused, "jagged, as if shattered with great force. Projectiles."
"Yeah. Bombs," Tony gritted. "Boom, ouch."
Loki's eyes snapped up to his face.
"That is the most monosyllabic you have been in your speech since our acquaintance," he observed accusingly. Another of those curling, damned-irritating smiles began to form.
"You are ashamed of them."
Tony was about halfway to his intended resting spot. "Oh I don't know, maybe- I'm just having trouble- staying alive right now?"
"Dying would have a different face to go with it, I imagine. And believe me, I have imagined it quite a bit."
There was a cheery thought. "Glad I made an impression. Maybe I just don't feel like sharing fuzzy feelings with a psychopath," he shot back rapid-fire. "Enemy knows your weakness, they exploit it. Nice going with yours, by the way. We might not have whipped your ass if you'd avoided Bruce and run off instead of thinking you could actually take him."
Loki's face soured, though he didn't take the bait. "Ah yes, the beast. He should thank me; I did him the courtesy of surviving the encounter, at least. How many others can your dear 'Bruce' still talk to who have angered him so?" His head canted mockingly to one side. "I'd bid him consider it one of his precious few successes."
Anger boiled over into Tony's ears. That was enough.
"You shut your mouth about him," Tony snarled, punching the floor for emphasis. The billionaire's eyes flared, his free hand clenched into a fist, knuckles popping. He almost abandoned his trek to the center of the cell to go over and kick the god's smarmy ass.
Almost.
"At least he has some remorse, you heartless dick. You don't even know how many human beings you killed when you showed up on our planet, do you?"
Loki said nothing, but his gaze shifted to the wall as Tony continued.
"I made that bomb. It was my fault they had it and it was me that they used it on, so no harm no foul; I'm still kicking," Stark spat. "I've done plenty of shit I'm not proud of and plenty of shit I'd like to forget. But that doesn't make you a smidgen better than me. I don't know what they've taught you about the human race up on your cushy Mount Olympus, Antlers, but don't you think for a minute that you know anything about-"
"Two-thousand, five-hundred and eighty-seven."
Tony stopped dead. He swung around to face the man sitting quietly in his corner and stared, propped on a single hand and resting on his knees.
"What did you say?" he murmured, incredulous.
Loki's eyes were blank but steady, his face shuttered, focused on a point on the wall across from him. "Two-thousand, five-hundred and eighty-seven humans were killed the day I led the Chitauri against you." He shrugged slightly. "Apparently one among them thought I lacked... conviction."
Tony stared, still kneeling on the flickering floor.
He had a pretty good idea of which one it had been.
"You..." Tony felt his gorge rising as he came up with possibilities: "What, a score card? You wanted a number to impress your comrades with? 'How many ants did you stomp today, O mighty-'"
This time Loki actually punched the wall himself, but his punch sent resonant waves of impact and white light through the entire cell that took ten whole seconds to fade away.
Tony most certainly did not gulp.
"Death does not bring me joy unless it gives me what I desire," Loki hissed angrily. "Do not assume to know my mind, human, for it will be your last mistake." He calmed enough from the outburst to glare back at him, head held high. "Of that, you have my word."
Tony could do no more than stare, his face gone grey.
"...God, you're sick."
The god looked unperturbed. "'Sick' will be the least of our problems as long as we are in this place," Loki muttered darkly.
Tony tried to scan their surroundings without looking too deeply into the void, continuing his crawl toward the safest part of the cell. "And where are we, exactly?"
"I thought it obvious."
"Yeah, space, okay, got it; there're a LOT of places you could just rename 'space' and it'd be so much simpler, but seriously, where are we?"
Loki's face shifted to a white mask of purely fake indifference. He spoke with a calm that wasn't forced at all. Which, here, meant that it totally was.
"The Other's realm. Specifically, his dungeons," he said blithely, and Tony didn't miss the pause before he spoke that name. "Apparently we both fell short in his expectations of conquest. The loss of his army and the Tesseract made him quite cross." Loki's lip curled a little, as if it pained him to say it. "You should be proud. Ants don't generally cause trouble for one such as him."
Tony felt like his reactor had just been fished out of him again.
"This is the Chitauri guy's place?" Tony's brain supplied about a thousand shots of the moment he'd plummeted from the freezing sky into a cacophony of skyscrapers and radiation, as if trying to make up for the fact that he hadn't caught on sooner. Ohh no, oh no no- shitshitshit this is not good-
"Stop your incessant talking," Loki snapped. "You grate worse than Thor's attempts at song."
"Yeah well whose fault is that?" Stark snapped, struggling to get to his feet and walk; maybe he could at least pace back and forth. "Apparently I forgot the safe word and you were squeezing too hard; what, you want me to break out some Sinatra while I'm at it?"
The demigod seemed to figure out that talk would be answered with more talk and opted for the more pleasant out, staring out the semi-transparent wall into space. His jaw was tightening and releasing sporadically, and pale though he was, he looked a little more so now.
The billionaire felt himself blanch.
Anything that could scare Loki- Loki- was not a thrilling option to consider.
Great, now no info and I get to find another way of not freaking out. Tony inhaled and tried not to think. Ha, right. Never gonna happen... Shutting his brain off generally required alcohol or knocking him out. He literally slapped himself into focus, hands at his temples. That helped, right?
"Okay, so do you know anything about the energy cage around us?" Still no reply. Tony went devious. "Ah, okay; so you're actually stupid. Gotcha."
The jab did exactly what it was supposed to do: Loki bristled.
"I have had hundreds of years to study the art of magic, and more to examine your frivolous excuse for Midgardian science," he said tartly. "Even if you knew what it was, it would accomplish nothing."
"I managed to block your voodoo pretty well."
Loki tried for dismissive nonchalance. "That scepter was not of my making."
"I see. Would have worked if you'd made it, then?"
"Obviously."
"Ever find out what was wrong with the other one?"
"Obviously not. Why do you think you're here?"
Tony stared again. "The Chitauri. You fed me to them, you little- and they sent you over to pick me up? Literally?"
Loki's lip curled in distaste at the word 'sent'. "It was my last card to play. Even with the Chitauri, a bargain is a bargain. They stop their... entertainment long enough for me to breathe, and perhaps I could conjure an escape with my borrowed time."
"Gee, you're thoughtful."
"I aim to please."
"Yourself? Sure."
"Do you have any actual objective paired with these retorts?"
"Yes, I'm trying to figure out how the hell we're getting out of here and how I can calm down enough to think, you freaking caribou!" Yelling. Yelling was good, made him feel better. Tony's fingers felt a little less like the cell phone of a stalking victim on manner mode, at least.
"So. They want my reactor."
Loki saw his face and grinned. It was not reassuring. "More specifically, they want you to build them a reactor. Or was it not strange to you that I did not simply rip it from your chest cavity and skip merrily back with my prize?" This time the smile had less actual mirth in it. "Be thankful. If they want something from your efforts, it means you will not be harmed. Not enough to hinder your progress on their new energy source, at any rate."
Tony caught bitterness in his words.
"Playing favorites, are they? Does Mother like me better than you?"
Loki's mouth twitched. He didn't answer, but this time he visibly shrank. The arrogance was gone. Just gone.
And Tony gaped at him.
"Are you- kidding?" he choked out. "No quip, no 'retort' from you? What in the hell-" Then he remembered exactly what Loki had said about stopping their 'entertainment'. "Are you saying your progress was hindered? What, did they..."
Stark stopped in mid-question.
Loki's entire body had frozen, an act of extreme effort and long-wrought reflex. He didn't shiver, but neither did he speak. The god's eyes were forcibly calm, but Tony knew that look. He had worn it before, in a cold cave, with death before him and escape a mere illusion meant for the naïve. That silence spoke volumes.
Loki's answer from earlier echoed back, and everything clicked:
"It was my last card to play."
This was it. This was Loki's Afghanistan, and for him there was no Yinsen, no other bargain he could make and no resources left to tunnel himself out. His trip to Earth had been it.
This was Loki's very important week.
And that made him the new Yinsen.
Blood and ashen skin on burlap, the glint of spectacles in torchlight and smoke, the sun just over the next hill at the end of the tunnel- "This was always the plan, Stark..."
Tony's heart began to slam away in his chest again, resonating with his emotions and the pulse of the energy in the walls. It wasn't like his usual panic attacks; the power in the cell seemed to be actually causing him to get worse.
Shit. What are we going to-? Okay, okay okay, just- like you talked about with Bruce- heart rate, lower your heart rate- shit, what did he say?! I have never meditated a day in my life- this is totally out of my league, this is- Afghanistan.
He pulled up short. His heartbeat just sort of faded out into nothingness.
Wait. Yes. It's Afghanistan.
Among random images of choking water and fire and bullets, the thought came to him. That's right. This was no different than his last cave prison. A little more sparkly and Madeleine L'Engle-ish, perhaps. And given his current companion wasn't going to be giving any motivational speeches over burlap sacks anytime soon. But perhaps if he could convince Loki that he could get them both out of there, the guy would cash in with whoever or whatever would save his own skin. He wasn't ready to die yet.
And as far as he knew, not many bona fide psychopaths counted the people they'd killed; at least, not like that.
A spark of weak hope began to flicker. You've actually got experience with this, Tony. And last time you made it out pretty damn well. He laughed aloud: a nervous, withered thing.
Maybe this time I'll make a freaking spaceship.
Then Loki's head snapped toward the wall to his left.
That was where a line of white light began to draw its way slowly around the shape of a rectangle: a door in the rainbow tumult of the walls that looked as if it were being cut by a laser.
Loki's calm eyes fractured when he looked toward the opening portal.
His expression made Tony's hair stand on end. Tony glanced swiftly from Loki to the light and back again, his own calm packing its things and getting ready to take off.
"What is that, what is- what are they doing? Antlers, talk to me here-"
Loki's breathing quickened through his nose, mouth clamped shut as he watched the light burn slowly across the wall, his panic visibly mounting as if the light were a lit fuse creeping toward a mountain of explosives. His eyes never left the light.
Tony felt as if he were watching an impending car wreck in slow motion, the way Loki's expression changed inch by inch. His skin was white, like wax, and his posture had gone from confident repose to rigid, curled shoulders and the general inward contraction of terror.
Apparently Loki had learned his fear tactics in the workshop from firsthand experience.
As the light traversed the outline of a rectangle down toward the floor, Loki's head shook ever so slightly in mute denial, and Tony was nearly hyperventilating. His hands reached for communicators and controls that weren't there, ones that would have called his suit and his team to him in an instant.
They weren't coming this time.
The line of light finally reached its destination, completing the shape of a door and colors vanished into white like sunlight reversed through a prism, leaving the entry to a dank, stained corridor in its place.
An organic stink filtered into the room, shuffling footsteps echoed and Tony found himself hunched in a defensive stance. As he'd expected, several weapons glowing with blue light were stuck in through the door. Last time he'd seen that model, Natasha had been wielding it, but he was pretty sure wasn't going to find a Russian redhead at the end of that speargun. His hard-won optimism vanished like steam.
There were at least forty of them waiting out there.
Pepper, please don't kill me for dying.
"Sschrashhast!" Screeching that could quite possibly be considered speech rattled in through the opening- and abruptly Loki burst up out of his seat.
"You will not!" he commanded them. Commanded. His captors.
And they listened.
To his credit, the demigod's eyes were full of fire, not fear. He had visibly bolstered everything he had for this. His eyes blazed.
"I am more than capable of exiting myself," Loki stated, striding slowly but firmly to the door and making his way through the portal, without pause and with all the swagger of any king in his squared shoulders. His chin was pulled up in an unmistakable mark of defiance.
"And you will wait for me."
All six feet of him was yanked in bodily by his collar the moment he crossed the threshold.
Tony's air left him in a rush. Well, he had to give it to him; the guy had balls.
With that, the door filled back in with a sparkling fog of iridescent light, and the opacity of the wall filtered back into place, leaving Tony untouched, standing in a perfect box of light just like before.
But this time, he was alone, with only his breathing for company. Tony huddled in the center of his box in the middle of deep space, and waited for something else to happen.
For a long, long time, nothing did.
~:{A}:~
T.S.
Hours in a cell were a terrible punishment. Hours with one's thoughts were worse punishment still.
Was this how they intended to get his cooperation? Putting him in a cell with Loki was underhanded enough, he'd thought, but the sheer time spent in this place was enough to make him wish for insanity. The doors must be controlled inter-dimensionally, he'd concluded, because there was literally nothing outside of the walls. Tony had watched a small meteor shower disintegrate in flashes of brilliant fire against the flat surface of his cell just inches from his face. After he'd gotten (sort of) used to standing on nothing, staring out of it was actually quite educational.
He'd counted all the constellations he was familiar with, listed all components in his dead communicator that might prove useful, tried to work out the equations for mass and light years in saliva on the glassy surface of the cell to figure out where he was (yes, saliva; what else was he going to use that didn't disgust him completely? And besides, it was just visible on the semi-transparent substance). It was this or letting his idle mind go to what was happening down that corridor however many dimensions away.
There was something under the buzzing crackle of energy in the cell, and Stark had at first dismissed it to random bursts of cosmic energy. Then he'd laid down to try to get some sleep, keep his energy up.
Tony never thought he'd be able to sleep again.
Whatever magic or force was keeping his prison intact, it was using the same energy to open portals to other worlds, and likely other dimensions. The disappearing door had proved that; there was currently nothing outside but black and stars. Now he was realizing that the connections did not completely sever with the doors.
He knew that because he could still hear the screaming.
The second Tony had put his ear to the floor, the vibrations had synced into interminable screams of pain, and now that his hearing knew what to look for there was no blocking them out. There were other spots, places where he knew that other doors were hidden. He'd caught bits of conversation in alien tongues, roars and groans that sounded like no animal he knew, whirring machinery, beeping controls, running water, soft crying: none of it from directly outside his prison.
And at the door where Loki had disappeared, there was screaming.
Nothing but screaming.
It was a masculine voice, but if he hadn't known what door they had taken him through, he would have sworn it wasn't Loki. It was only the occasional break in his wild shrieking that had allowed for a few choice insults and curses to escape, and he could hear the arrogant prick still mouthing off despite his pain in about three languages during those precious gaps.
Tony had to grin a little.
Atta boy, Prancer.
But then they would go back to it, and Tony couldn't help but shudder when the vibrating howls started again. Dear God, what were they doing that could make him scream like that?
The Chitauri hadn't so much as approached him yet, and it was making him uneasy. If his captors didn't have anything they wanted from him, then there was nothing he could do. It'd be him keening down those dimensions-slash-hallways, and he'd wonder who else was listening to him in their cell.
When Loki got back, he'd have to ask him if he knew where any of the other doors went. So far he could tell none of them led directly back to Earth, but maybe if Loki could tell him which doors he'd been through... They obviously had been able to establish a portal wherever the Tesseract had been, so maybe using another power source like that, they could...
...totally not get back to Manhattan. The Tesseract was on Asgard now. And Odin sure as hell wasn't going to let them hop right into his living room.
It had been about half a day's time, he was fairly sure, when the line of light came back to reopen the portal while he was half-conscious.
And the heap of leather and smoking linen they threw onto the floor only mildly resembled the man who had left the cell hours before.
Stark swallowed. Fucking hell.
Tony thought he was a fairly level-headed guy. He'd been through some shit in recent years: the soldiers in the Funvee, the day Obadiah had died, the day his reactor had been put in. Doc Hammer and the Russian. New York. He'd been trained in triage and made damn sure to learn how to treat basic injuries way before joining SHIELD. But medical prowess and field experience aside...
This was not something he knew how to handle.
Loki was a wreck. Tony didn't even recognize the type of burns he was sporting, and blood seemed to be coming from nowhere at all. His hair was smoking, like a guy he'd seen once who'd been electrocuted pretty badly, and the collar was crackling with green energy. Green, why green? At this rate, getting him breathing would be a good start.
No one ever said they wanted him alive, he realized.
"Loki? Prancer, wake up man- you with me here? Loki?"
Not even a twitch. Perfect.
Well, let's see what we've got... Tony figured rolling him over wasn't going to do that much more damage at this point, and as gently and slowly as he could, he rolled the unconscious god onto his back, keeping his weight supported so he wouldn't jolt when he hit ground.
Tony stared, hands hovering just above him. "Shit."
Dude, he had so better not vomit right now.
Loki looked like something out of a horror movie. His face was white, smeared with blood, and wrinkled in places from pink burns. He was missing an eyebrow on one side, that eye was burned shut- wait, was it even still in there?- and something had clawed him across the nose and cheeks at one point. It had been something fairly big; the marks were spaced out pretty far. The corners of his mouth looked charred from the inside. He twitched periodically, but it was obvious that he was out cold.
"Geez, man; you couldn't be quiet long enough to get a break back there?"
Deep down he knew it didn't matter. You could say a guy had nice hair and a great disposition during torture and he'd just laugh and start sharpening another knife on your nose. It simply helped to keep talking.
Tony smelled burned meat and hair, and an acrid ozone-ish scent that he couldn't figure out. Names of chemicals flashed across his vision, but in this solar system-slash-galaxy it could've been anything. The energy in the walls took over again, and frustratingly Tony's chest seized up, making him sit heavily until he could ride it out.
Crap- gotta get back in the center-
"Ngh- Loki, you gotta wake up, dude," Tony wheezed. "Come on, you can't kick my ass unless you wake up. I'll keep talking until you do; you know I will."
His threat worked, but not like Stark had hoped.
Loki's gut contracted, his eyes flew open and suddenly he threw up a really tall, really disgusting gout of blood that took him completely up off the floor and hit the far wall.
Guh. Talk about projectile.
That was when Tony realized the blood on both wall and floor was still smoking, and bubbling.
The Chitauri had actually fed him acid.
"Oh, we are SO getting out of here."
Loki continued to retch until the floor was puddled with it, and Tony tried not to think about anything that remotely reminded him of eating or spitting or any other bodily function relating to puke, his own stomach doing a very lively samba.
"Gghuhh-" Loki sat leaning over his own legs, head resting on his knees until his breathing steadied into some kind of recognizable pattern. Tony waited it out, obliging him for another two minutes before speaking.
"...Well. Look who made the current situation worse."
"Be. Silent," the god wheezed. The words sounded like they'd been strung through a sausage grinder. Long black hair was hiding his face. "Just..."
Whether it was will or ability that failed him, Loki did not finish. He stayed right where he was. Just breathing.
Tony almost kept going, but the figure huddled on the ground was so freaking pathetic that he couldn't even bring himself to rib him a little. Without his cape, horns or any other trappings, he looked surprisingly average. Actually, he looked kinda skinny, now that he thought about it. Loki's arms had wrapped around his own legs, as if hugging them would keep anything else out.
Yeah, no. Puppy-kicking had never been one of Tony's preferred pastimes...
Still. He had just been choked by the dude yesterday.
Stark gave him another minute or two, then took the shot: "You got a fairly decent singing voice on you, I'll give you that. Though originally I would've guessed soprano."
Loki went stock-still.
"You heard?" he croaked.
"Hard not to. The doors stay attached even after closing. This cell has more connections than a Hollywood starlet, cosmically speaking," Stark offered, trying for conversation over mockery, his pride sated. "It sounds like there are a few hundred more of us around here somewhere, maybe other cells, maybe other worlds; not sure yet."
"Paths," Loki murmured roughly. "So many... 'f so little use."
"Every little bit helps. I may be out of my depth here, but as soon as I get a system down, I am King Under the Monitor. Uh, Microphone. Micrometer? Any technologically relevant word that starts with 'M'. What else can you tell me about the portals?"
Loki hiccuped on another wave of acidic bile, leaning down over the floor on all fours, and Stark kicked himself mentally.
"I mean when your windpipe isn't made of pudding anymore. How long was it before you healed from Bruce's cuddling? For a wait estimate." He paused. "Just hold up fingers for days; toes for hours."
The demigod glared in his direction long enough to know that was the last answer Tony was getting for a while.
"M'kay. I am going back to the middle of the cell now," Stark said as if he were intending to visit a spa, and crawled away to count out heartbeats. Relief was almost funny when it hit, the jolts of tension receding to an ebbing pulse rather than muscles almost detaching.
Oh Center-Floor, how I missed you.
Jarvis would probably have said something saucy about that being Tony's personality in a nutshell. Maybe something about how much he loved being center stage. It was weird not having him around; even in his other properties or at Steve's place for crying out loud, he'd had Jarvis in a communicator, or the wristband for his suit.
He was like the voice in his head, and it was lonely without him.
Because yes, that's healthy. At least I know where my voice is coming from.
Loki didn't move for another hour, and when he did, it was sluggish with pain. He actually missed a step first try and his leg slid out from under him, dropping him back to the ground with a gasp. Served him right; he had tried to get up like nothing was amiss. Tony knew better than to offer any help. He found it gratifying that his first impulse had been to ask, though, because Tony Stark was the definition of a gentleman. Dammit.
A sigh echoed down the length of the room. Slowly, surely, as if resigned to doing so, Loki supported his weight on his hands and lifted his own leg into place underneath him, then used it as a lever to bring him to his feet. It was a fairly cool thing to watch, because it was obvious he had no feeling in the limb; yet he still used his physiology like the tool that it was. It looked like something he'd done often, the movements natural and utterly smooth.
Tony tried not to think about how many times he must have done it to get to that point. Hopefully it was a trick he wouldn't have to learn himself... How long had the guy been here, anyway?
Loki's jaw was clamped in a grimace, and he slowly took step after step back to his own corner, making damn sure not to fall into his former seated pose as he reached it, but lowering himself with muscles that screamed protests at him in response.
His face was bloodless, but he'd made it.
So there, his expression said haughtily.
Stark was getting the feeling his standing up to the Chitauri earlier and the definitely showy move of physically standing up had both been for his benefit. He didn't have the heart to call him on it.
"It might hurt a little less if you'd just scream and faint like a little girl. I might actually be willing to help if you played the damsel in distress." Tony's eyes were closed as if he were meditating, or resting, but really he just wanted to give the demigod a smokescreen of privacy. It never helped when you were being watched while inwardly wanting to scream bloody murder.
Eventually he couldn't help it; he glanced at him.
Loki's expression may as well have been a middle finger.
Tony grinned a little. "I kinda like this. Just me and the sound of my own voice. It's... kind of a turn on, really. But then I've always been too hot for me. I'm outta my own league."
Spare me, the god's eyes said, filled with disdain.
"So let me run a real quick check here; you get dragged back to Asgard by your princely horns, somehow manage to escape and then get nicked by your former employers. About right?" No response, but then he didn't care if he got one. "I'm assuming you didn't actually think they'd be throwing you flowers and parties after you escaped and come running back to them like an idiot. Which is a compliment, by the way."
Loki's hands had tensed into balls of sharp-looking knuckle.
"Not quite, then... Did they manage to pull you off your couch in an Asgardian dungeon somewhere? Because that would be impressive. Right out from under Odin's nose..."
Tony could swear he hear a tooth crack in Loki's direction.
"But that would be assuming you had either pissed his royal creepiness off, or that you were important enough to steal for collateral... maybe a bargaining chip, or-"
He hadn't even heard the guy move when two hands grabbed him from behind by the collar and hoisted in off the floor into a face that smelled of burning chemicals, metallic blood and vomit:
"You are going to finish that thing and get me out of here," he gurgled in barely recognizable English, "or I will slit your throat and project your healthy, working form for our captors until my magic drains the life from me. Do you understand?"
Tony just looked at him, not blinking.
"Ever think of just saying 'please'?"
~:{A}:~
Let me know what you think. This thing wouldn't allow me to go on with my life until I'd put it together. Or least started the premise. Ideas are totally welcome, and while I have scenes in mind, I'm not nearly the practically criminal masterminds that Ordis or Lady Charity are with their storylines and complex character workings. I have to work for it. XD
Peace out, Avengers.
*stares down room full of hyper Japanese 5th graders like the barrel of a loaded shotgun*
LET THE SECOND TERM... BEGIN.